About Dharma Bum

I am essentially a talentless average Joe. I have no special skills. I have tried my hand at different sports, music, and various other endeavours as outlets for a pent up urge of some semblance of creative expression that I feel exists within me. I have found it in photography, travel, hiking, skiing, yoga, motorcycle riding, and ultimately, a simultaneous blend of all of these pursuits through extended road trips, treks, and wanderings. Learning about Zen while consuming red wine also helps to put life in perspective.

I have spent the better part of my life following a predetermined linear path as it had been mapped out for me by society. Preschool. Elementary school. High school. University. Marriage. Job. Children. Mortgage. Endless work. Endless consumption. Endless responsibility. Endless obligation. The Rat Race.

As Oscar Wilde stated so simply: “I don’t want to earn a living. I want to live.”

For me, travel and photography provide a departure from the stressful repetitiveness of everyday existence. We travel not simply to escape life, but so that life does not escape us. Photography provides the means both by which to attempt to capture the essence of the beauty that we encounter in nature, and to express our vision and interpretation of that beauty to others.

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“A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels is being photographed in the deepest sense and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.”

– Ansel Adams – Photographer

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“In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values